How to Build Culture and Engagement to Win the War for Talent

Human resources (HR) is an important function for businesses of all sizes. Unfortunately it’s often overlooked and underappreciated by small and midsize companies because they just don’t have time for it.

But to grow a small business you need to recruit, develop, and retain talented and motivated people.

On the last episode of #SAPTalks, I spoke with Lisa Campbell, senior director of HR at NeoTract, and Ursula Ringham, director of digital marketing at SAP, about some HR challenges and best practices for small business.

One of the topics we discussed was the importance of building company culture and increasing employee engagement. This is a big issue for companies right now. In the 2015 Global Human Capital Trends report published by Deloitte, 87 percent of the organizations surveyed cited culture and engagement as their top challenges, but less than half believe they have good programs in place to engage and retain employees.

Campbell said NeoTract has a very performance-driven culture with strong accountability. Twice a year the company performs an engagement survey. Campbell pours through the results, comments, and ratings with C-level executives, shares everything with the leadership team and employees, and then establishes action items.

Performing those types of HR activities, managing employee data, and setting goals and action plans isn’t easy for small companies if they don’t have the right tools in place. NeoTract knows this well. In the past it used PowerPoint to collect and manage HR information. Campbell said it was like herding cats – very time consuming and frustrating for employees.

When the CEO asked Campbell to set up a simple way to look at everyone’s goals at the middle of the year and assess whether they are on track or behind, she decided it was time to implement SAP SuccessFactors solutions. With the help of implementation partner KPIT, NeoTract had solutions for goal management, performance management, and 360-degree reviews up and running in about three weeks.